To process or not to process, that’s the question.

One of my greatest doubts is how far can I go with processing. Should the image be the original (with a little of cropping, tone or light adjustment,…)? or must I do a hard processing to focus on the features that I want to show?

I think that it depends on each situation/shot, but then I can be moving from a “document” to a “conceptual image”.

Actually your camera has already “processed” your image, I think it’s ok to give some more processes in computer for your own preference.
My processes are pretty simple, convert color to B&W in Lightroom or Photoshop, resize it to 800 px wide, that’s it, never take over 2 minutes
FYI

Dear Santi, in the first one, I loved the original one, the man is much more impressive… and in the second one, again the black and white impressed me more… finally the last one, yes the original one again. But, I am not against to process our photographs… Even I try to create some different images from my original shots! But as I learned or have experience, I can say this, not for every photograph… I think in your selection group, they don’t need to process more because the originals are so beautiful… But maybe you can work in artistic way, but this time it would be almost different from the original ones… These are my humble thoughts 🙂 Thank you with my love, nia

It’s an interesting question – I love your originals, but used in a different context the adjustments you’ve made as examples could work – I think the second image would work for advertising (but I prefer the first image – it’s beautiful and eloquent, and it allows you more room to explore the context of the subject). With the third and fourth images, I prefer the b&w (removing the colour strengthens the composition), and although it’s not as you shot it, it could have been. Five and six are interesting – five is just a brilliant capture – it’s beautiful, but six seems far too theatrical for me and loses the magic air that five breathes.

i don’t have this problems because i see directly in b/n 🙂
however, i try to shot what i see and if the “machine” don’t return me the correct view, i’ll fix it with PS or LR! no regrets!
and yes, your originals shots are amazing Santi! see ya

Except when stated, I’m the author of the images and texts in this blog. Feel free to use them, but be polite and mention their origin and don’t modify them or use them for commercial purposes. If you are interested in the full-size images or the use of my contents for other purposes, please, contact me: jisn1964@gmail.com . Thanks.

A place for researchers interested in empirical measurement or estimaion of parameters for quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation from pollen records to share methods, fieldwork stories and inspiration